


Nerds

by LizaPod



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: And Romance, Diabeetus, Dorks in Love, Everyone lives, Fluff, M/M, Oh my god so much Fluff, after the war, and giant nerds, and sap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1903551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaPod/pseuds/LizaPod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yancy/Chuck bits of fluff from Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Meet-Cute_

Chuck comes back from Pitfall angry. Angry at Stacker, for ejecting him, angry at Raleigh and Mako for being the big damn heroes, angry at Herc for not going down with him, angry at himself for being broken.

He has to lie in his hospital bed as the world moves on without him, faster than he can keep up with a shattered femur and burns across half his body. Herc and Mako and Raleigh come to see him but Herc is busy hauling the ‘Domes back to full functionality, Mako is occupied with Raleigh and running Jaeger restoration, and Raleigh is rescuing puppies or whatever it is he does when Mako is busy. They’re too busy to sit with the pissed off, bored invalid with no prospects outside a Jaeger and no prospects _in_ a Jaeger now with a bum leg and no enemies to fight.

He _seethes_.

He watches the news and misses his dog. He wonders what he’s going to do when he’s released from hospital; he has no formal education past fifteen, no peacetime goals, no peacetime experience. The world doesn’t need Chuck Hansen, child soldier and cocky cunt, any more.  

Some genius decides he needs therapy; the therapist makes it through three sessions of Chuck sitting silently watching TV before he gives up and says Chuck needs someone else. The next therapist lasts one session.

The third is Yancy Becket.

“I’m not a therapist, Hansen, so don’t give me that look,” Becket says, sitting next to Chuck’s bed and dropping a bag on his stomach. “Eat a damn donut.”

“What do you want?” Chuck goes digging into the bag and pulls out a cruller. Half of it goes in his mouth at once before he eyes Yancy suspiciously.

“I was gonna say the pleasure of your company, but since apparently you’re a grumpy little shit with no table manners, I’ll go with ‘to do a fellow vet a solid,’” Yancy says.

“Did my old man send you? I told him I don’t want to talk about my goddamn feelings.” The second half of the donut goes the way of the first.

Yancy takes the bag away to fish out his own donut. “I’ll have you know I volunteered for this, and I’m taking time out of my busy schedule to come here,” he says, but when Chuck scowls at him—he knows everyone else has important shit to do—Yancy’s smiling, a little lopsided quirk of his lips. “Figured you’d need some company, kid, I remember what it’s like being chained to the bed like that.”

Chuck remembers Herc getting updates about Yancy’s condition, after Knifehead and Raleigh’s disappearance, and waves to the bedside chair. “You can stay, I guess. Footie’s on though, so shut up.”

“It’s called _soccer_ ,” Yancy chides, even as he turns up the volume on the TV.

“ _Americans_ ,” Chuck sneers, but Yancy stays for the whole game, only leaving when the nurse comes for Chuck’s PT.

“Same time tomorrow?” Yancy asks. Chuck shrugs noncommittally, but Yancy’s there again the next day.

 

 

* * *

_Go Go Speed Racer_

“I swear to god, Becket, if you call me _wheels_ one more time I’m going to gut you. Slowly. With my spoon.”

 “Aw, baby, I love your sweet-talk,” Yancy drawls from his stolen wheelchair. Chuck tries to ram him without jarring his leg, but Yancy twists away with a suspicious degree of agility. Chuck wonders how many times he’s had clandestine wheelchair races in the past. “Come on, Hot Rod, let’s see if you’re up to this.” 

 They line up at the end of the corridor. It’s between rounds so none of the residents are around, and all the nurses are sick of them and are avoiding them for reasons that sound a lot like _shmausable shmeniability_ , as Becket put it oh-so-maturely. The hallway is therefore clear and perfect for proving that Chuck is, in fact, better in every way, even when he’s got half a dozen pins in one leg. To be absolutely fair, though, Yancy’s pilfered a brace so they’re both immobilized in the same way.

 Yancy counts them in. “One… two… _three_ … three… _three_ … GO!”

They tear down the hallway in their squeaky second-hand chairs. Chuck feels- not free, not exactly- but _exhilarated_ \- for the first time in weeks when he flies past the nurse’s phone designated as the finish line just half-a-leg ahead of Yancy, who groans behind him.  
  
“Two out of three?” he asks.

A nurse’s voice echoes from around a corner before Chuck can answer. “DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT,” Nurse Ratched’s golden boy stick-in-the-mud hollers. Chuck dissolves in laughter at Yancy’s aggrieved expression. He’s out of breath, and his leg aches from a few bad jolts, but the ache in his face from laughing at Yancy outweighs it. 

Yancy levers himself out of the wheelchair and hobbles on his braced leg to ruffle Chuck’s hair. “Fine, Speed Racer, you win this one.” 

“I swear to _god_ , Becket-“  
  
“Hey, that wasn’t _wheels_ , you can’t gut me for it,” Yancy gloats, grinning down at him with his stupid charming, smug face. Chuck will later deny that he did anything other than act on instinct to make Yancy stop calling him names, but really, he knows that when he grabs a handful of Yancy Becket’s t-shirt and pulls him down into an awkwardly-angled, nose-bumping teeth-clicking (heart-pounding) kiss, he was doing something he’s wanted since he was fifteen.

By the time Chuck lets go of Yancy’s shirt, Yancy has ahold of Chuck’s chin and a wicked smile. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just grinning at Chuck, as Chuck feels his face boiling red and he fumbles for words. He barely gets a coherent sound out before Yancy interrupts him. 

“ _Chuck_ and _YANcy_ sittin’ in a _tree_ ,” he singsongs, and tilts Chuck’s head back to kiss him again, so carefully and sweetly that for half a second Chuck thinks he’s going to melt.

“Shut up, it doesn’t mean-“ Chuck sputters, but he’s reaching for Yancy’s shirt again.

  
“No backsies, Hansen, you’re stuck with me now.” Yancy kisses him again, on the lips, and the cheek, and along his jaw until he’s whispering in Chuck’s ear. “ _K-I-S-S-I-N-G_.”

 

* * *

 _Roomba_  

Herc had bought an off-base house before Pitfall, with a big garage and plenty of space for Max to run around, and rooms on opposite sides for him and Chuck- wishful thinking that Chuck’d want to stay with him for a while after the war. Chuck coming home with a gimp leg and antsy after being stuck in one room and two hallways for the better part of two and a half months meant the garage got colonized almost immediately with mountains of pilfered scrap wire and metal and starts tinkering. Chuck is bored, still mostly out of commission and lonely with Yancy up in Alaska working- which he’d apparently put off and put off again until Chuck was out of hospital, which makes him flush and almost giggly when he thinks about it- so between doing his catch-up online course work for his semi-honorary, semi-strings-pulled bachelor’s degree and prep for his actual grad program next fall, he’s in the garage trying to stay busy.  Before long, he’s cranking out tiny robotic toys for Dome workers’ kids and fixing broken coffee pots and tvs for their neighbors, and fucking around with an automatic, learning robot vacuum cleaner thingy for Herc to dust up after Max while Chuck’s knee is still bum.

The first one works so well he starts a second one, for Yancy, that he’s finalizing when Max comes waddling into the garage ahead of Herc.

“You still working on that thing for your boyfriend?” Herc asks, sitting across from Chuck at his work bench.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Chuck mutters automatically, fussing with the solder on a joint.

“Chuck, you’re building him a Gipsy Danger themed _Roomba_.”  
  
“Shut up.” Chuck scowls at his soldering iron, annoyed that Herc is interrupting him at work and that he’s trying to do his responsible-dad thing, and that he can feel his cheeks going hot.

Herc snorts derisively. “When’s he back in town, then?”  
  
“Friday next. Why?”  
  
“Gotta know when you two are gonna need the place to yourselves for a couple days, don’t I?” Herc sounds far too pleased with himself, like he’s had anything to do with this whole Chuck-and-Yancy thing that’s happening. Chuck throws an oily towel at him in irritation.  
  
“Piss off, old man,” he retorts- lamely, he’s aware- and looks up only to sneer. Herc’s looking at him all misty-eyed and fond and it’s almost unsettling. “What? It’s not like he’s coming to escort me to prom, or whatever, stop looking at me like that.”

“Fine.” Herc throws a protein bar down on the workbench and slides to his feet. “Don’t forget to eat again, you gotta build up your strength before Becket gets back.”

“You’re disgusting, I hope you know that,” Chuck grumbles at him as he leaves the garage, and as the door slams behind him, “he’s getting a hotel room anyway.”

 

* * *

 

_Redeye_

Twenty three hours and fifteen minutes after taking off from Dulles, Yancy strolls (staggers, really, but with style) down the gangway in Sydney and out of the sterile zone. He’s exhausted, from the mind-and-ass-numbingly long flight, and a week of dealing with bureaucrats in DC before that, and a month of organizing the reactivation of the Icebox before _that_. All he wants is a pot of coffee and a real meal and a place to sleep that isn’t a half-reclined airline seat designed for someone half a foot shorter than him.

Correction: he wants all of the above, and Chuck Hansen.  
  
He grins when he sees the aforementioned nerd standing in a corner with his cap pulled down over his eyes and his jacket collar not quite popped but turned up against prying eyes, and Max sitting at his feet with a hideous vest proclaiming his usefulness as a service dog. The only service he seems to be providing is drooling all over the floor and making little kids giggle, but hey, like anyone was going to tell Chuck Hansen that Max couldn’t come everywhere with him. 

“What, no flowers?” Yancy says as he stops in front of his boyfriend (not that they’re using that out loud, yet, but what else to call the guy you call every night from the other side of the planet just to make sure he’s eating right and doing his PT and because you miss his voice). “A guy flies half way around the world, he expects flowers.”  
  
“There’s coffee in the car, that’s gonna have to be good enough,” Chuck says, but he’s almost smiling, and it’s adorable. “Hi.”

“Hi.” Yancy pulls Chuck’s stupid cap off, the one with the faded Striker Eureka logo, and shoves it into his own pocket. “No flowers, coffee’s all the way out in the car- you’re not making a guy feel very welcome, Wheels.”

“Oh, piss off, it’s 8:30 in the morning,” Chuck grumbles, even as he lets Yancy pull him into a hug. “And don’t call me—“  
  
Chuck doesn’t finish his refrain of _don’t call me wheels_ because Yancy kisses him, deep and slow and thoroughly inappropriately for 8:30 on a Friday morning in the meet-and-greet area of Sydney Airport. He ignores the whispers and giggles and shutter snaps as he dips Chuck back as cheesily as possible, just to see Chuck pretending to be angry in a few seconds. Chuck’s arms are around his neck for the time being though, and he’s letting Yancy in as readily as he had in the driveway of Herc’s house when he left a month ago.

“Arse,” Chuck mutters when Yancy finally lets him back up. He’s clearly trying to look fierce when he punches Yancy in the arm- the left arm, even though that’s a more awkward angle than his right arm would be- but he’s pink-cheeked and his dimples are showing. Yancy kisses him again, just because he can, and then bends to pick up Max’s dropped leash.

“You promised me coffee, Hansen, so let’s get outta here.” Yancy shoulders his bag, wraps his arm around Chuck’s shoulders, and nudges Max to his feet.

 

 

* * *

 

_Fourth of July_

Chuck hates Yancy’s DC apartment. It’s convenient for his internship at NASA, at least, but it’s too small to have Max come out for the summer and its convenience means it’s on the Mall so he has to wade through ten thousand tourists every time he goes outside. It’s also just big enough that it feels empty without Yancy when he’s travelling for work, which is more often than they had anticipated when planning their summer of cohabitation. Everything gets worse when the week of the Fourth of July rolls around. The crowds get worse, the heat is unbearable, Chuck wishes he had Striker back just so he could get across the Mall without getting stuck behind the Meanderthals, and Yancy has been in San Francisco for a week. He’s busy doing nothing- watching telly, sulking, thinking about taking a shower and jerking off just to kill time- on the third when the door to the apartment slams open and shut.  
  
“Chuck?” Yancy calls.

Chuck practically falls off the sofa, trying to turn and look and get up and not knock over his beer all at the same time. “You’re back?”

Yancy drops his bag with an audible thud and comes into the living room, just in time for Chuck to have gotten his feet under him. “Surpriiiiise. I thought I’d come back for the weekend, go out of town, get away from the fucking tourists.” He kisses Chuck affectionately. “I missed you.”  
  
“Missed you too, arsehole,” Chuck says, and hides his smile in Yancy’s neck. “So where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise. Pack a bathing suit, though. And sunscreen for your pasty ass.” Yancy squeezes his arse and Chuck is reminded that he was very, very recently thinking about jerking off. “I’m taking a shower, then we’ll go, okay?”

Chuck packs quickly, throwing t-shirts and bathing suits and sunscreen and lube into his duffel bag in under five minutes. Then he heads for the bathroom, stripping as he goes, and steps into the shower with his boyfriend. Yancy tugs him close immediately. Chuck kisses him, slow and filthy and eager after a week alone.

“We should get on the road soon, babe, beat the traffic,” Yancy says, and it almost sounds like a protest, except his hands are fondling Chuck’s arse and grinding his cock against Chuck’s hip.

“Are you seriously saying you’d rather me _not_ blow you so we can be in the car fifteen minutes sooner?” Chuck asks, taking Yancy’s cock in hand and stroking him slowly. Yancy groans and kisses him again.

“Well, when you put it that way.”

Chuck doesn’t end up on his knees after all, and they don’t get on the road until much later. Instead Yancy presses him against the shower wall and fucks him slow and sweet, hands wandering over his body and lips on his throat.

 

The next night, on the deck of the tiny waterfront house Yancy rented in Bethany Beach, Chuck blows him as the town’s firework display goes off over the bay and a neighbor blasts the Star Spangled Banner. When Yancy comes with a groan, Chuck swallows and wipes his mouth. “I feel like I just gave Captain America a blowjob,” he says, and Yancy laughs.

“God, I fucking love you.” Yancy pulls him up and kisses him roughly, shoves his hand down Chuck’s shorts and jerks him off, just as the finale explodes over the water.


	2. Chapter 2

The Saturday before Chuck’s flight to New York to start grad school, Herc opens the house to friends from the Sydney ‘dome, the few relatives still in the area, and whatever pilots want to make the trip to Sydney to see their youngest comrade in arms off to civilian life. Yancy’s presence is by now a given, which isn’t what Herc had been expecting when he’d asked Becket to maybe talk to Chuck a little, get him out of his funk after Pitfall, but it’s a welcome thing.

Chuck is a dictatorial little shit on his best days and with the stress of moving into a dorm, in another country, away from Herc and Max for the first time since he was in Ranger training, he’s spiraling into full-on Kim Jong Un territory. By the time the party starts, though, Yancy’s pulled him aside half a dozen times and gotten his feet back on the ground with quiet words and- Herc assumes- wandering hands. He’s _almost_ gracious to their guests, better with the Jaeger techs and pilots than the cousins his own age, and downright affectionate with Raleigh.

Herc’s pretty sure they became friends after Yancy’s big romantic gesture at the airport went viral. A reporter, having heard rumors of Chuck and Raleigh’s rivalry in days before Pitfall, tried to get Raleigh on camera saying something unflattering about Chuck dating his brother. Raleigh looked straight into the camera, completely deadpan, and informed her, “Yancy’s not good enough for him. Chuck could do so, so much better. Someone who’s not _old_.” It played on the news for days and Chuck had laughed uncontrollably every time he saw it, especially if Yancy was around.

After everyone had left that night, except Raleigh-and-Mako, Tendo, and Stacker, Herc watchs Raleigh tease them across the pool. Chuck sits between Yancy’s legs, leaning back against him, both of them with their feet in the water. Even in the dim evening light, Herc can see the twisting, pale scars that crawl up Chuck’s calf and disappear under the edge of his shorts. Herc realizes that he hasn’t seen Chuck in shorts or a bathing suit since he came home from the hospital almost six months ago. It’s only another moment before he realizes he’s never seen Yancy in short sleeves before, either. Yancy’s scars are darker than Chuck’s, older, but just as brutal down his arm.

Herc accepts another beer from Stacker. He scrapes the grill absently, watching his son. Yancy’s arm is around Chuck’s waist. Chuck turns his face into Yancy’s neck and laughing at something he’s saying in response to Raleigh’s insults, until Yancy kisses him. Herc drinks, and grins at Stacker, who’s watching Mako and Raleigh with the same kind of paternal fondness. “They’re all idiots,” he says, and gestures with his bottle at their kids.

“That they are, Herc.” Stacker smiles. "That they are."


	3. Chapter 3

The semester Newt comes up to teach a guest seminar at Columbia, Chuck is scheduled to TA anyway, but he’s in Mechanical Engineering, not Bio, so strings have to be pulled so he can work for Newt. Chuck has found, to both his liking and his private distress, that being one of the saviors of the world means a lot of strings get pulled for him. Yeah, it makes life easier sometimes, given that he’s not got a proper education or a normal childhood, but it also makes him feel like he’s cheating- and he knows other people think he’s cheating, too. For once, though, no one makes any comments, because who else is going to TA a class on kaiju biology? Has anyone else at Columbia ever been close enough to fire a flare gun into the eye of a Cat 4?

No they fucking well have _not_.

The problem is that Newt is a genius rock star wunderkind and shit, but he’s a terrible teacher, and Chuck spends half his time wrangling Newt and the other half trying to get an auditorium of star-struck nerds to stop doodling Newt’s name in hearts on their tablets, and barely has the energy to grade their exams and homework on top of that.

He hates TAing, he realizes halfway through grading the first stack of tests. At least half a dozen undergrads have come to his office hours to whine about the test being unfair, or to try to suck up by asking him for war stories, or flirting outrageously to get him to fix their grades, like he was gonna be so taken by some soft little barely-legal from Greenwich who’s never stepped foot in a dome that he’d up their grade.

 _its not like they dont know i have a boyfriend_ he texts Yancy, after another one tries to butter him up with the whole _Oh I’m so grateful to you for **everything**_ act.

 _Do I have to come up and duel some co-eds for your honor???_ A few minutes later Yancy sends him a picture of stick figures dueling, over what he assumes is supposed to be Striker, doodled in the margins of what looks like one of Yancy’s interminable progress reports on Dome reconstruction and activation. Chuck stifles his laugh in the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

_no dont want you in jail for murdering undergrads who am i gonna marry for papers if ur in jail_

He gets another picture of a crying stick figure in cartoonish jailbird stripes and laughs again.

The day before Thanksgiving break starts, Chuck is at the end of his rope with Newt and his students. By the end of class he’s going to strangle someone, anyone, all of them starting with Newt. At least half the class is cutting because they’re all slacker shits so it’s only fifty or so of them and not the full hundred-plus. He’s trying to edge past a bunch of zoned-out chem majors in the hallway when someone clears their throat behind him.   
  
“ _What_?” he snaps, and turns. He just wants coffee, not to deal with another round of excuses and whining.

Yancy’s leaning in the doorway of the classroom across the hall, smug as anything in his cunt mirrored aviators and cunt bomber jacket. He looks like some disgusting 80s American wet dream. It’s disgusting. Girls are practically swooning. “I missed you, too, darling, it’s so good to see you,” Yancy drawls.

“Are you wearing sunglasses _inside_?” Chuck sneers, but he’s happy to let Yancy pull him in close by the strings on his hoodie. “You’re such a cunt.”

Yancy laughs, and takes his sunglasses off, and dips him back in one of the cheesy romantic comedy kisses that he’s so weirdly fond of.

“No one is impressed, Becket,” Chuck mutters in his ear, on principle, even as he straightens Yancy’s stupid popped collar.

“What are you talking about, everyone’s impressed. Look at them.” Yancy takes Chuck’s backpack from him, slinging it over his own shoulder.

“They’re undergrads, not real people. Look at Newt. Newt’s not impressed,” Chuck complains, waving at the only person who’s possibly a bigger nerd than Yancy in the hallway.

“I dunno man, I’m kind of impressed.”

Chuck scowls at his boss-slash-former tutor-slash-traitor. See if he helps keep class under control next week. “Whatever. Why are you here, anyway?”

“I wanted cheesecake from that one place. Figured I’d come at least say hi to this ungrateful jackass I know while I was up here. Maybe see if he wants dinner and a blowjob and maybe let me cook him Thanksgiving dinner, since it’s a family holiday and shit.” Yancy catches his hand and twists their fingesr together.

“You can’t _cook_.” Chuck squeezes his boyfriend’s hand as they walk to Yancy’s car in the parking garage.

“Okay, I ordered precooked shit from somewhere. But it’s still a family holiday, and I didn’t get to feed you turkey last year.” Yancy kisses him, swats his ass and sends him around to the passenger side. “Stop complaining or I won’t buy you any goddamn cheesecake.”


End file.
